Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments

Validity of the emotional Stroop task hinges on equivalence between the emotion and the control words in terms of lexical features related to word recognition. The authors evaluated the lexical features of 1,033 words used in 32 published emotional Stroop studies. Emotion words were significantly lower in frequency of use, longer in length, and had smaller orthographic neighborhoods than words used as controls. These lexical features contribute to slower word recognition and hence are likely to contribute to delayed latencies in color naming. The often-replicated slowdown in color naming of emotion words may be due, in part, to lexical differences between the emotion and control words used in the majority of such studies to date.     

Contingency and stimulus change in chained schedules of reinforcement

Higher rates of pecking were maintained by pigeons in the middle component of three-component chained fixed-interval schedules than in that component of corresponding multiple schedules (two extinction components followed by a fixed-interval component). This rate difference did not occur in equivalent tandem and mixed schedules, in which a single stimulus was correlated with the three components. The higher rates in components of chained schedules demonstrate a reinforcing effect of the stimulus correlated with the next component; the acquired functions of this stimulus make the vocabulary of conditioned reinforcement appropriate. Problems in defining conditioned reinforcement arise not from difficulties in demonstrating reinforcing effects but from disagreements about which experimental operations allow such reinforcing effects to be called conditioned.     

Assent and permission rejoinder

We share Roberts and Buckloh's (this issue) concern about issues of assent and permission in research with children and agree that our research cannot conclude legitimately that (a) researchers failed to obtain permission/assent, (b) children were put at risk, or (c) failure to report permission/assent procedures was, in any way, unethical. We never made these conclusions. Rather, we argue that publishing assent and permission would enhance compliance with ethical standards, sensitize researchers and readers to its importance, and shift publishing priorities in an appropriate direction.     

Correction to: Introduction: The Varieties of Enactivism

Topoi - The original article was published with incomplete acknowledgement. The complete acknowledgement section is given in this correction.     

Police perspectives on responding to mentally ill people in crisis: perceptions of program effectiveness

In this study, we sampled sworn police officers from three law enforcement agencies (n=452), each of which had different system responses to mentally ill people in crisis. One department relies on field assistance from a mobile mental health crisis team, a second has a team of officers specially trained in crisis intervention and management of mentally ill people in crisis, and a third has a team of in-house social workers to assist in responding to calls. Calls involving mentally ill people in crisis appear to be frequent and are perceived by most of the officers to pose a significant problem for the department; however, most officers reported feeling well prepared to handle these calls. Generally, officers from the jurisdiction with a specialized team of officers rated their program as being highly effective in meeting the needs of mentally ill people in crisis, keeping mentally ill people out of jail, minimizing the amount of time officers spend on these calls, and maintaining community safety. Officers from departments relying on a mobile crisis unit (MCU) and on police-based social workers both rated their programs as being moderately effective on each of these dimensions except for minimizing officer time on these calls where the MCU had significantly lower ratings. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.